On Thursday after work a friend dropped me off at LAX for my flight to San Antonio. The flight was quicker than anticipated and we touched down about half an hour early (11:30pm local time). Luckily Byron only lives a few miles from the airport so he was able to pick me up in no time.

For the past year Byron, Iris and Alan have been living in an old Cadillac dealership converted into apartments. The setting is interesting. Because they used to be a parts of a showroom floor -all the rooms have gigantic windows that rise up to a high ceiling (I’d estimate about 18 feet high). Byron had an air mattress that would become my bed in the living room for the next four nights.

On Friday morning Byron and I went to El Millagrito. I had a Migas Taco for the first time. This is the ultimate carb-loader machine consisting of a flour tortilla wrapped around scrambled eggs infiltrated with tortilla chips and cheese. They had an interesting chili sauce in an unmarked container that was quite good.

After that we headed to the local coffee shop in the Olmos Park neighborhood; Olmos Perk. Upon walking in the whole place knew Byron (which would end up happening a lot over the course of my visit despite Byron reminding me he “doesn’t know many people here”). We spent about two hours at the coffee shop pouring over the music and photo files I’d brought on a portable hard drive (which VP was so kind to donate for this trip).

I would later discover this share-fest would only be going one way as Macs can take mp3s and jpegs quite easily – but to share you have to drag photos out of iphoto and mp3s don’t exist in abundance (most of Byron’s music is stored in itunes as .AICC files).

Later it was time to say goodbye to Byron as it was time for his hot anniversary date with Iris. Alan didn’t have plans so he accompanied me to the local Art Walk (“First Fridays“) starting out at Byron’s office – Blue Star. We took the trolley down to the walk. The trolley actually stops directly opposite Byron’s front door, which was a little surreal coming from LA where you have a long drive/walk/bus/subway trip to get anywhere.

There was an exhibit of Japanese photography that looked familiar. Then I realized I’d seen one of the same photos at LACMA on my visit there a few Fridays ago. After that I can’t say I saw much good art. Not a dig on San Antonio as I have just as much luck finding talent in Los Angeles. One guy, Michael Herrera was particularly horrible though. Alan and I both found ourselves in his gallery saying out loud “this is a children’s exhibit, right?” Then as we exited someone else was buying a piece from the artist – a portly goateed white man in his early 30s. I quickly snagged a business card to discover his website (www.artofgrace.us) doesn’t work. If you really want to see how bad it is he can also be found here

Alan and I hopped back on the trolley at 9pm as they stop running the service at that time. After coming back we hopped over to the local greek restaurant where I tried a greek hamburger.